Life in Special Schools in South Africa: Voices of Former Students

Abstract

We describe educational experiences of people with disabilities who attended special schools in South Africa. We found significant differences in education between White and Black participants in terms of teaching quality, access to therapy and assistive devices, class sizes, subjects, and grades offered. Additional differences were noted between participants with congenital and early-onset disabilities, and those with degenerative or acquired disabilities who moved from a mainstream school to a special school. Thirty-six percent of participants in this study completed their education after Education White Paper 6 (EWP6), South Africa’s inclusive education policy had been implemented. Despite this, findings suggest that all these participants experienced similar challenges as those who received their education during the apartheid era. This study highlights the important need to address the existing “special school” scenario, and effectively implement the principles of EWP6.

Keywords:

• Barriers
• children with disabilities
• disability
• discrimination
• inclusion
• inclusive education
• South Africa
• special schools

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Harry Crossley Fellowship (supporting EM); and the National Research Foundation of South Africa under Grant specific unique reference number (UID) 85423. The Grant holders acknowledge that opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in any publication generated by the Harry Crossley Foundation and NRF supported research are those of the authors, and that the Harry Crossley Foundation and NRF accept no liability whatsoever in this regard.The authors have declared no conflict of interests.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.